The last of the great ice ages that came and went over north-eastern Pennsylvania culminated 50,000 years ago with the departure of the Late Wisconsinan Glacier. It left the Poconos not with the dramatic mountains of younger ranges but with the kind of rolling hills that makes truck drivers say: “If they flattened out Pennsylvania it would be as big as Texas.”
The glacier dug huge divots in the earth that filled with the melting ice and became the lakes that the region is now famous for. Not all of the impressions became lakes; some became swamps that so filled with sphagnum moss that they then became bogs – peat bogs. Algonquin people knew how to find the bogs by searching for the tamarack trees that thrived on the acidic soil produced by the decaying moss. The Algonquins used the moss for diapers and the trees for snow shoes. In fact the word tamarack is Algonquian and means “wood used for snowshoes”.
A sphagnum moss bog takes thousands of years to form. The top layer is living moss but the bottom layers are made from anaerobic decaying matter. The lack of oxygen in the bogs has led to the findings of preserved whole woolly mammoths and early humanoids. Early settlers learned that peat moss, when mixed with sandy earth, improved the soil. Later, it became a very popular fertilizer, especially for golf greens. Protestors claim that the practice is mining and that peat-harvesting companies are ruining fragile thousand-year-old environmental systems. Despite the protests, peat harvesting continues.
When the peat is gone streams are often diverted into the hole that remains and instantly you have lakefront property. This is how Tamarack Lake was born.
Harry passed the “Welcome to Tamarack Lake” sign replete with silhouettes of the tree that is its namesake. This was a smaller and darker lake than Ice Lake. Houses sat further back from the road and all were shadowed under heavy trees. When he got out of the car he wondered if it would be hard to breathe – it wasn’t.
Harry knocked on the door and waited a long time for a pot-bellied moustachioed man in a too-small T-shirt to come to the screen door.
“Mr Elliot?” Harry asked.
“Colonel Elliot, son. Just ’cause I don’t serve anymore don’t mean I didn’t earn the title.”
“Yes, sir, Colonel, my apologies. My name is Harry Cull,” Harry said, pressing his identification against the screen. “I’m consulting for the state police and I’d like to speak with you about last Wednesday.”
“What about it?”
“Ah, may I come in?”
“No, you may not,” the colonel said casually.
“Oh, ah, OK. You told Trooper Cirba that last Wednesday you were shown a property by Charlie Boyce.”
“I already gave a statement to the officer, son. I have no intention of repeating myself.”
“Yes, sir, this is just routine. if I could—”
“Speak to Trooper Cirba, son. Good day,”
Harry stood looking puzzled at the closed door for a moment, then opened the screen door and knocked gently. After getting no answer, he knocked hard.
The door opened fast. “Son, I told you to speak to Trooper Cirba.”
“I have, sir; he sent me. Now, if I could just ask you at what time and where did you meet Mayor Boyce?”
“I will not repeat myself.”
“Yes, sir, you said that before,” Harry said, trying not to smirk. “This won’t take long.”
The colonel shook his head in disgust and slammed the door again but it didn’t close. It rammed painfully against Harry’s foot and bounced open again.
The colonel spun angrily. “Do you know who I am?”
“You are US Marine Colonel Marlon Elliot. Your previous post was at the Pentagon working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You are retired and have for the last four years been living here at Tamarack Lake in a house that was brokered by your friend, Charlie Boyce. Now, sir, do you know who I am?”
When he didn’t reply, Harry continued: “I am the man who is going to have a warrant sworn out for your arrest under the charge of obstructing justice if I get one more evasive answer.”
Harry instantly wondered if his ballsy stand-off was a good idea. The colonel stared at him, his face reddening with every heartbeat. Harry found it easy to imagine the old guy grabbing the decorative sabre off the wall and running him through for insubordination.
The stand-off didn’t last as long as it seemed to Harry. Finally, the colonel shrugged and threw up his hands. “Hell, son, have you met the woman?”
“Sir?”
“His wife. You met Charlie’s wife?”
“Ah, yes, sir.”
“If you were married to that harridan you’d step out on her too. Wouldn’t you?”
Harry almost instinctively replied, “Absolutely”. Instead, he said: “I don’t understand what we are talking about, sir.”
“Charlie called me up on Thursday and told me about some sort of break-in at his office. He said he had been off boffing some heifer and didn’t want his wife to know ’bout it.”
“Are you telling me that you didn’t see Charlie Boyce last Wednesday, and Charlie asked you to lie for him?”
“Like I said, have you met that woman?”
“Yes or no, Colonel?”
“Well, yes.”
“Colonel, did Trooper Cirba tell you why he was asking about the mayor’s whereabouts?”
“Nope and I didn’t ask.”
“Colonel, this is a murder investigation.”
“Oh, my god,” the colonel said. “Did Charlie finally kill the bitch?”
* * *
Harry called Cirba and informed him that the mayor just lost his alibi.
“The colonel lied to me?” Cirba asked.
“Don’t get too mad; you never told him it was a murder. Charlie asked him to lie so as not to reveal he was with a woman.”
“What woman?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Son of a bitch,” the trooper said.
Cirba said he was going to pick up the mayor for a chat. Harry had to go back to the lake house for a replacement galvanic skin response sensor, in case the mayor consented to a polygraph. They agreed to meet at Harry’s place.
Before he hung up Cirba asked: “Can we just polygraph the whole county and get this over with?”
“I’d love to but there’s that pesky constitution getting in the way again.”
“Yeah.”
* * *
When Harry got to the lake house he found a note stuck to the front door written on a parking ticket. It read, “AT THE STORE – C.”
Harry parked next to Cirba’s new unmarked car and entered the store. Cirba was sitting alone at the counter in front of a half-eaten donut. He raised his coffee cup in a greeting.
“Where’s Todd?” Harry asked.
“Haven’t seen him – which is a good sign. The pine needle telegraph must not know what we know or he’d be down here grilling us.”
“Where’s the mayor?”
“Don’t know that neither. He’s not at home or at work. I’ve got the Turnpike statie watching his office, in case he turns up there. Do you think the colonel could have tipped him off?”
“I don’t think so,” Harry said. “I don’t know the man, but once I explained to him what was going on he was pretty contrite.”
“If I find out he did tip him off, I’m gonna bust that pompous old buzzard.”
“So what do you think this means?”
“It means Charlie lied to me, and until he tells me the truth he’s in my bad books. I’ll give him enough time for another coffee and donut and then I’m going to have a warrant sworn out on him and issue an APB.”
“Remind me not to get in your bad books,” Harry said.
Just as Cirba polished off the last bite of his second donut the bell-less door to the store opened.
“You looking for me?” the mayor said.
* * *
The mayor didn’t act like a guilty man, but in Harry’s experience that didn’t mean much. Almost anybody with a little self-confidence could start an interview looking calm and assured. It was how they reacted to the cut and thrust of a proper interrogation that separated the guilty from the innocent, the good liars from the bad.
Cirba clicked on the tape recorder, dictated the date, time, and stated his name and badge number. “In attendance is consulting investigator, Harry Cull, and subject, Charles Boyce.”
“You lied to me, Charlie,” Cirba said.
“Is the colonel in trouble?” the mayor asked.
“You know, Charlie,” Cirba sighed, “we’re kinda beyond chit-chat. I’m gonna ask the questions and you’re gonna answer them.”
“That’s not going to happen, Ed.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re going to ask me why I got the colonel to lie for me and where I was on Wednesday, right? I can’t tell you that.”
“Charlie, I’m inches away from charging you with obstructing justice. I can add conspiracy to that and you do time.”
“You do what you have to do, Ed.”
“Mr Boyce—”
The mayor interrupted Harry: “Didn’t I tell you to call me Charlie?”
“That was before you started lying to me. I don’t like lying, Mr Boyce.” Harry moved his chair in closer to the table and looked the mayor directly in the eyes. “The colonel said you were, and I quote, ‘boffing some heifer’. Were you?”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Sure you do. Were you with a woman on Wednesday morning?”
“I’ve said all I’m going to say.”
“You were either ‘boffing a heifer’ or murdering Big Bill.”
The mayor just stared at Harry, the muscles in his jaw flexing with the tension of grinding teeth. There was a quick knock at the door. Trooper Gostigan came in and handed Cirba a piece of paper.
“This is a warrant to search your home and office,” Cirba said. “Want to give us a headsup about what we’re going to find?”
“Like I said, do what you have to do.”
Cirba threw his hands up in exasperation and stood. He took a couple of steps towards the door and stopped. “Jesus, Charlie, did you kill these kids?”
“No.”
“Then what the fuck is going on?” Cirba waited until he was sure no answer was coming. “Gostigan, lock him up and don’t give him a phone call for an hour. I don’t want him tipping off anybody before we can have a look-see.”
* * *
Harry and Cirba were both relieved to find Helen not at home when they reached the mayor’s house. Neither of them was looking forward to having the Ice Lake Harridan screaming at them for the entire search.
No shotgun was found, even after a spider-strewn crawl through the mouldy crawlspace. Cirba and Harry were just about to start the laborious search through the house’s paperwork when Helen returned and had what can only be described as a conniption. She was so upset she was hardly using words, screaming at a pitch that actually hurt the ears. Cirba had to finally threaten to have her restrained and gagged before she agreed to sit quietly. Even without words she was an uncomfortable presence. Eventually both investigators thought that taking the paperwork to the tension-free environment of Harry’s place would be a better idea. Cirba handed Helen a receipt for what they took. She simply stared at him until he dropped it on her lap.
* * *
“Tea?” Harry asked?
“Got any liqueur?” Cirba said.
“There might be a drop of grappa.”
“No thanks, I’m not that shook. I’ll try this tea stuff.”
Harry started to prepare the brew.
“That’s a snazzy teapot.”
“Mine got broke in the earthquake. Todd gave me this as a replacement.”
“A gift from Todd? And MK said he made you a sandwich. What’s going on with you two?”
“Todd’s just an old-fashioned gossip. He likes me ’cause he thinks I’m stirring things up. I give him grist for his mill.”
“That makes sense.”
“Arresting the mayor is sure going to stir things up.”
Cirba took a huge stack of papers out of a clear plastic folder and began to go through them one at a time. “Yeah, but I don’t want to just do him for obstruction of justice. I want to find out what the fuck went on.”
Harry cut open two plastic trash bags and used them as a tarp to cover the floor. Then he upended a bag of garbage and began to sift through it. “You might have the nicer job there, Ed, but in my experience, you get more truth out of garbage than you get from anything neatly filed away. For instance, I can tell you now that neither of the Boyces are cordon bleu chefs.” He held up a frozen lasagne box in one hand and a can of Spam in the other.
“The Spam just means they shop local.”
Cirba didn’t find much in the paperwork other than the normal. Bills, like the credit card stuff, would have to be itemized and there were the usual documents like insurance and tax paperwork for the real estate company. The only thing of interest was a resumé that Charlie had written when he first moved to the Poconos. In it he listed an accounting firm in Jersey City where he held the position of CPA for eight years.
“Hey, look what I found,” Harry said as he slid coffee grounds off a glossy magazine. He took it over to the sink and wiped the cover with a damp sponge. He spent a few minutes paging through it before he brought it over to Cirba. “It’s a computer magazine. See those straight rip marks on the cover? That means there was a free CD attached. Now look here: in the back is a list of the programs on the disk and see what’s number one on the list?”
“Disk Demolisher,” Cirba read, “‘make sure data on your hard disk is gone forever’. That’s the kind of program that—”
“Erased Big Bill’s computer,” Harry finished for him.
“I think we should talk to the mayor again.”